PCR enables exponential amplification of nucleic acids. In particular real time PCR (a.k.a., qPCR) enables simultaneous analysis of the amplified nucleic acid during amplification, for example by means of melting curve analysis.
Automation of PCR (for example, in conjunction with qPCR systems) has also made significant progress, further enabling performance of 96, 384 or 1536 PCR reactions, for example in microtiter plate formats. Such systems are also becoming more user friendly. For example, microtiter plates comprising the compounds necessary to perform PCR amplification and/or detection (e.g., in freeze dried form) are commercially available. Nevertheless, it remains a challenge to further improve the work flow for PCR analysis, in particular, for automatable high throughput PCR analysis allowing for simplified DNA analysis.